For those die hard gamers out there, September 7th couldn’t come fast enough. With the teasing release of Spore Creature Creator, I bemoaned the fact that my laptop’s graphics card was not strong enough to run it. Yet, I held out hope for the Nintendo DS release…I was woefully disappointed.

The DS version is like Pokemon…I have absolutely no patience for the choppy graphics, and ham-fisted implementation. My expectations were fairly reasonable…a decent Creature Creator and a scaled down version of the game. I understand that there are limitations to the DS interface, however, after seeing what can be accomplished with a hidden object game I purchased…EA really dropped the ball.

The Galaxy Edition that my husband purchased is beautiful. You can make creatures, buildings and all manner of vehicles. I should correct myself..my husband didn’t purchase the game…he rented it. EA has limited how many installs that you can do from your discs to 3. So…heaven help you if you run into real computer issues and you are forced to rebuild your system more than 3 times in a year. You would be forced to purchase another edition…you don’t own the game…despite the $ 90.00 price tag.

It’s actions like this that make EA a target for hackers…because hackers just love a challenge, and EA is wearing a bullseye. Some brilliant, if slightly unbalanced, hacker will find a back door and cut EA off at the knees. As selfish as this is going to sound…I sure hope it happens soon and it’s huge. Normally, I am not quite this blood-thirsty, but I have to say…EA has earned it.

I finally had an opportunity to create three creatures, a herbivore, omnivore, and a carnivore.

These are my babies…and I understand why the game and the creation of the creatures is so addictive. The interface is smooth and intuitive, and the options are endless.

To surreptitiously take away an end-users choice is lower than low. It cheapens a beautiful product with outstanding features. EA has become the biggest pirate and thief on the marketplace today. For that, they should be ashamed while they roll in the money that they have stolen from honest end-users.

The sheer delight that my husband and daughter take in the creation and game play almost makes EA’s prohibitive and ludicrous DRM acceptable…I did say almost.